The Census: A Once in a Decade Service Opportunity

I eagerly awaited its arrival. I had received postcards telling me it was coming. I had heard news reports that it was on its way. I had promoted it to others in the National Service Briefing. I was ready for it.

What’s the it I’m referring to? My 2010 census form. You read that right – I was excited to finally get my census form in the mail. I know, I know, most people usually don’t get too excited about forms coming in the mail, especially government forms. For me though, Census Day (April 1) was nearly as exciting as Election Day. The Census is as essential to our democracy as voting is, and since this is my first census as an adult, I looked forward to it almost as much as I did my first time voting.

I was first hired at Youth Service America to manage ServiceVote 2008, our election year program that is based on the idea that even if youth aren’t old enough to vote, they can and should still play a critical role in elections and the ongoing public policy process by connecting their service to civic engagement and participating in elections in other ways besides voting. It’s just as important that young people are engaged in the process of the census. For me, filling out the census is a kind of patriotic act of citizenship. I’m standing up and being counted.

Why is the census so important? Elections depend on the census. U.S. House districts, most state legislative districts, and many local district boundaries depend on census data. Any elected office that requires even distribution of representation (for example, each of the 435 U.S. Representatives are supposed to represent the same amount of people) depends on the census. If more people have moved to an area, seats need to be reapportioned to provide equal representation. Funding depends on the census. The federal government and state governments provide funding based on formulas that are based on the number of people living in an area. For your community to receive its fair share of funding, the government needs to have the right data of exactly how many people are living in your community. Nonprofits depend on the census to deliver the most effective services. Often as we are writing grant proposals or developing programs or deciding where to target specific resources, we depend on the census bureau for reliable data. We need to know how many young people live where in order to engage them, and the census helps give us this information.

So, now that I’ve convinced you that everyone needs to care about the census, how can young people get involved? The most important way for young people to get involved is to help organize and get everyone in their community to return the census. (Not only is completing the census required by law, but if everyone mailed in their census form on time, we’d save an estimated 1.5 billion dollars. Yes, billion with a B.) This Saturday, April 10, thousands of volunteers across the country will organize “March to the Mailbox” campaigns to get people to return their forms. In just a couple of weeks, Global Youth Service Day (April 23-25) provides another perfect opportunity for young people to organize public awareness campaigns to get people to complete and return their census forms.

New York City schools’s website has a very thorough listing of census resources that can be used in census service and service-learning projects at: http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/SocialStudies/EducatorResources/Census+...
“CENSUS 2010 as service–learning involves a census-related service project that is linked to the school’s academic curricula. This service learning project can occur within the content areas of history, civics, mathematics and economics. Some examples of curricula areas include an exploration of the relationship between the counting of citizens and funded services to the community, representation in government, and population demographics and trends.”

Lisa Frank, an intern at YSA, helped me collect a list of project ideas and resources for service projects around the Census. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Plan a Census celebration for GYSD. This event can be a fun community gathering in which people learn about the census and why it’s important to fill it out. Youth can prepare presentations, play trivia games, and role-play visits by census takers.
• Host a service day at a local school and teach participants about the importance of census data in determining school funding. Send everyone home with reminders to fill out and return their census forms.
• Hold a census competition within your school or district. The classroom or school in which the most families complete their census forms wins a prize or recognition. Kick of the competition on Census Day and keep track of how each team is doing.
• Participate in the campaign Children Count Too! This is an effort to make sure all infants, children, and youth are counted in the census. Learn more at http://2010.census.gov/partners/toolkits/toolkits-dora.php.
• Have a poster-making party in which you make creative, colorful reminders for people to return their census forms. These posters can be distributed to local businesses and organizations, put up as fliers, or scanned into a computer and printed as note cards to give out to people in your community.
• Spend a day knocking on doors in your neighborhood reminding people to mail back their census forms. You can create and distribute materials about why the census is important and where people can get help filling it out.
• Do you speak more than one language? Not everyone gets a census form in their native language so let members of your community know that they can come to you for help. You can set up a booth in a public place like a park, or spread the word through email, social media, and local organizations.
• Census Partners are organizations that are working towards achieving a full count. Look up partners near you at http://2010.census.gov/partners/partners/ and ask how you or your group can get involved.
• Visit the Census for Kids or the Census for Teens website to have fun while learning about the census, and encourage your friends to do so well. Both sites can be accessed from http://www.census.gov/schools/index.html.

Have you mailed back your census form yet? I mailed back mine weeks ago. Only 9 years and 11 months until the next census form arrives in the mail.